


even one's own relations

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: hide and seek [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alderaan, Angst and Humor, F/M, Families of Choice, Family Feels, Grief/Mourning, Languages and Linguistics, Light Angst, Non-Linear Narrative, Prequel Trilogy As History, Rey Kenobi, Tumblr Ask Box Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 12:00:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19106671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: “If I’m remembering the holos right,” Han pronounces eventually, still squinting, “you got your dad’s nose, kind of. But your mom did you a solid in the looks department, too.”***Four conversations about family.





	even one's own relations

**Author's Note:**

> This will make much, much more sense if you have read the rest of the series, but the basic premise is that Obi-Wan and Sabé had a relationship during the Clone Wars without ever intending to maintain a partnership, and their child was born six months before the end of the war. This child grew up Force-sensitive and was hidden in plain sight by Sabé, and when she died on Alderaan as a result of the Death Star, he joined the Rebellion and eventually married a fierce Alderaanian bomber pilot. And he was Rey's dad. 
> 
> He's a doctor. He cheats at cards a lot. 
> 
> This is who I'm picturing: https://rain-sleet-snow.tumblr.com/post/184652012586

_“After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, **even one's own relations**.” _

_― Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance_

 

**i. kyrie and han**

 

The beach is quiet. Not, Kyrie thinks, because the locals are shy of Leia, Han and Luke; he knows they’re not. Nara, the youngest daughter of the local Gungan chieftain, had made it her business to act as Luke’s lifeguard the last time he was here (and given Luke’s limited swimming skills, the galaxy can thank her for it). But it is a school day, and a working day, and the waters are unseasonably cold for most humans, so the beach is deserted. No swimmers, and only their picnicking group.

 

“Luke tells me he told you about your dad,” Han says.

 

Kyrie slants his eyes sideways. Luke has no discretion and would never have survived under the Empire. The fact that he managed to keep his mouth shut long enough to avoid being executed by a stormtrooper, even on backwater Tatooine, is testimony to his aunt and uncle’s excellent parenting. “We discussed it.”

 

“He told me for a reason,” Han says. “Didn’t tell just anyone. He mentioned it to me and Chewie and Leia.”

 

“You’re his closest friends.”

 

“He clammed right up when Wedge showed up, and Wedge’s his boyfriend.”

 

Kyrie folds his lips together and sits in silence for a very long moment, and then says extremely reluctantly: “Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

 

“Oh, hey, that’s why,” Han says, sounding surprised, but the kind of surprise that suggests something suddenly makes sense. “I met the guy.”

 

“You _what_?”

 

“Yeah, when I flew Luke off Tatooine. You must take after your mom, because your dad was crazy.”

 

Kyrie digests this.

 

Han leans back a little and squints at him. “You know… I was a kid during the Clone Wars. I must’ve forgotten more stories about General Kenobi than most people ever heard. And Chewie got up to some weird shit during the Clone Wars, he maybe even met your dad under the Republic.”

 

Kyrie looks back at Han. He opens his mouth, he wants to say something, but his mind is a strange stunned blank.

 

Not a _bad_ strange stunned blank, though.

 

“If I’m remembering the holos right,” Han pronounces eventually, still squinting, “you got your dad’s nose, kind of. But your mom did you a solid in the looks department, too.”

 

Something bubbles up from Kyrie’s chest, and to his surprise, it’s laughter.

 

**ii. limia and leia**

 

Limia and Leia are women of few words and shared grief. Kyrie is closer to the princess-senator than Limia is, in some ways, but only Limia and Leia understand what it’s like to have an entire world ripped from beneath your feet, and Limia is one of maybe three people left in the galaxy who can speak Viceroy Organa’s _llonés_ dialect to Leia. And Leia’s one of maybe three people who can understand her when she does. Kyrie’s trying, and his Alderaanian accent is strongly flavoured with the Llóna Mountains, but the dialect is beyond him.

 

But more than all of that, they’re women who once had very extensive families, and now have few or no remaining blood ties. They hang on tight to the friends and family they’ve got.

 

So of course Leia knows Limia’s pregnant, but Limia knows seeing it will be different, the same way seeing Leia pregnant with Ben was for her.

 

When Limia comes face to face with Leia, she takes Leia’s hand and places it on her stomach, which is only slightly rounded. She could hide it if she wore baggy clothes, but she isn’t.

 

“Your newest subject,” she says.

 

Leia pulls a truly incredible vinegar face.

 

“Fine,” Limia says, grinning. “Your newest little cousin. I’m going to need you to help me teach them _llonés_.”

 

Leia’s expression softens instantly, an amber brightness in her eyes that isn’t all joy.

 

“ _Viva Alderaan_ ,” Limia says, and softly, Leia echoes her. 

 

**iii. limia and luke**

 

“It’s strange,” Luke says, lying under Limia’s private craft – a birthday present from Kyrie, who knew she would prefer a fixer-upper she could tinker with herself than something fresh out of the classiest Nubian shipyard, and who sized it perfectly for the landing pad on their apartment building in Hanna City. Limia has grease on her hands, paint on her face, and a feeling of wellbeing she doesn’t get from many places.

 

She also has Luke messing with her baby. Better keep an eye on him.

 

She crawls back under the craft herself. Luke isn’t doing anything outlandish, which is a relief. “What’s strange?”

 

“Our fathers were like brothers, and we just happened to meet and make friends?”

 

“The way Kyrie tells it, you just needed a sympathetic medic who knew what to do with a Jedi.”

 

“Yeah, but I got him out of his shell eventually.” Luke jabs a hydrospanner at her. “So did you. Anyway, don’t you think it’s strange?”

 

“Maybe,” Limia says. “But if I wasted my time worrying about all the strange shit in the galaxy, I wouldn’t have time to sleep. For fuck’s sake, I have a Jedi for a houseguest and _la infanta Leia_ on speed-dial. This is not what I thought I was going to grow up to do.”

 

“The Force moves in mysterious ways,” Luke says, trying to sound grave and solemn. There’s a screeching row from somewhere in the garage.

 

Limia crawls out from under the craft again and assesses the situation. It’s not difficult. The blue and white chassis arguing with the mech-droid and the pungent Binary tells her all she needs to know.

 

“Luke, will you tell your fucking droid to stop picking fights with mine?”

 

**iv. kyrie and leia**

 

Han and Limia are watching a dubiously incognito Luke podrace on the holonet. Leia has no interest in racing, and Kyrie has no interest in counting all the ways Luke could die as he speeds round the death-trap of a track, so they’re out on the balcony of his mother’s favourite sitting room, watching the sun set over the wine-dark sea, drinking, and talking about Sabé Theodora.

 

Sabé talked about her early life, but trod lightly around topics that might be treasonous; she gave little of substance away about the queen she served. Still, most of what Kyrie does know is small and personal, the kind of detail Bail and Breha were afraid to give Leia for fear of betraying Padmé Amidala’s importance, and Sabé’s own life as the queen’s handmaiden gives away a certain amount about Padmé’s own, for a daughter who never knew a thing about her mother beyond a political thesis.

 

It's also nice for Kyrie just to talk about Sabé. He doesn’t often, except sometimes to Limia. Playing his cards close to his chest may no longer be a necessary survival strategy – Kyrie can hold his coffee in midair if he runs out of hands, heal openly, even build a lightsaber, supposing one were any use to him - but caution and silence are ground into his bones. And his mother and her secrets are a part of him too precious to share indiscriminately.

 

No-one is listening here, and Leia is as silent as the grave. Kyrie talks until his voice gives out, and he stops and takes a drink of wine.

 

“Our mothers were… like sisters, then,” Leia says finally, staring out to sea. The sun’s almost disappeared, an orange flicker over the horizon, the sky turned pink and violet and every colour in between. There’s a pod of Gungans traversing the bay, probably heading offshore for the night; they’re smaller than dolls at this distance.

 

“Yes,” Kyrie says, and then screws up his face. “Well, no… closer, in some ways.”

 

A faint smile tugs at Leia’s lips. “That makes us cousins, in a sense.”

 

“If you like,” Kyrie says, and lets his hand fall open near hers.

 

Leia takes the opening, and squeezes his hand tight.


End file.
